Great Negotiations

by Fredrik Stanton

  Reagan, while encouraged by the Soviet proposal, understood that important differences remained. The Soviet Union’s more than five hundred intermediate-range missiles in Asia threatened American allies in the Pacific, and as mobile systems, the Soviets could easily return the weapons to Europe. “Zero INF in Europe is fine,” the president told the Soviet leader, “but there must be reduction of these missiles in Asia.”20 Reagan resisted the demand for a ten-year ABM Treaty commitment. Even if all nuclear missiles were eliminated, both sides would still have the capacity to produce them and would need to guarantee against a future madman like Adolf Hitler reintroducing them. Reagan reminded Gorbachev that after World War I, both sides kept their gas masks even though poison gas had been outlawed.

  At half past noon they broke for lunch, and Reagan returned to the American Embassy with his senior advisers. “Gorbachev had introduced new and highly significant material,” Shultz explained. “Our response, I knew, must be prepared with care, capturing the extensive Soviet concessions and pointing up deficiencies and difficulties from our standpoint. I was glad we had on hand a knowledgeable team with all the expertise we needed. They could rework the president’s talking points during the break. Excitement was in the air. I felt it, too. Perhaps we were at a moment of breakthrough after a period, following the Geneva summit, of stalemate in our negotiations.”21 In the embassy’s cramped, bug-proof, secure room, Paul Nitze, the State Department senior arms-control adviser, remarked, “This is the best Soviet proposal we have received in twenty-five years.”22

  When the leaders reconvened that afternoon, Reagan outlined his reservations. He welcomed their proposals but pressed for a 50 percent reduction in heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles, and insisted that intermediate-range forces be dealt with on a global basis. The president replied that if they got rid of them globally that would be fine, and he was all for it. He suggested that a joint working group discuss the proposals that evening. “We are getting somewhere,” Reagan observed. “The basis for an agreement is within reach.”23

  An understanding also began to form between the two leaders on a more personal level. “Looking back,” Reagan later recalled, “it’s clear that there was a chemistry between Gorbachev and me that produced something very close to a friendship. He was a tough, hard bargainer. He was a Russian patriot who loved his country. We could—and did—debate from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. But there was a chemistry that kept our conversations on a man-to-man basis, without hate or hostility. I liked Gorbachev even though he was a dedicated Communist and I was a confirmed capitalist.”24

  With one day remaining, the leaders designated teams to work overnight to narrow the differences. “Let us turn our experts loose,” Gorbachev said. “The two of us have said a lot. Let them go to work now.”25 “And so,” Shultz wrote, “the first day ended. We had not made any concessions but had received more movement from the Soviets than anyone thought possible. The whole nature of the meeting we had planned at Reykjavik had changed. The working groups meant that a U.S.-Soviet negotiation had been launched.”26

  Reagan returned to the American Embassy, and Gorbachev left for his quarters aboard the Georg Otts, the Soviet cruise ship tied up in the harbor. While the two leaders slept, their experts worked to bridge the gap in a marathon all-night session. Headed by Paul Nitze, the seventy-nine-year-old eminence grise of the U.S. arms-control community who had negotiated the SALT I strategic arms limitation treaty and the ABM treaty with the Soviets, the U.S. team met for ten and a half hours with their Soviet counterparts, led by Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces.

  Nitze and Akhromeyev focused on finding a formula to reduce strategic weapons. Since the Soviets had both more nuclear weapons overall and superiority in most categories of delivery systems, a straight 50 percent cut across the board would leave the Soviets with lasting nuclear dominance, something no American president could consent to. Nitze pushed instead for equal outcomes by category. He explained:

  We spent a large part of the first six hours of the meeting trying to pin down what “fifty percent reduction” would entail. Akhromeyev explained that the Soviets proposed halving the strategic arsenals of each side “category by category.” I was quick to object to that formula. That would mean unequal end points in those categories where one side or the other had the current advantage. For example, the Soviet Union’s large relative advantage in ICBM warheads would remain. I thought the sides must strive for equal end results; this would require unequal reductions where the current levels favored one side.27

  After hours of haggling, when they finished at six thirty Sunday morning Nitze and Akhromeyev had agreed on a ceiling for each side of six thousand warheads and one thousand six hundred delivery vehicles, including ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and heavy bombers, which meant greater cuts by the Soviets but reduced each side’s strategic arms by half while accommodating the American concern for an equal numerical outcome. Kenneth Adelman, head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Reagan’s senior arms-control adviser, called it “more progress than we achieved in thousands of hours in hundreds of meetings over the previous five years.”28

  On Sunday morning, after breakfast with their delegations, Reagan, Shultz, Gorbachev, and Shevardnadze arrived at Hofti House for the final session, scheduled to run until twelve thirty in the afternoon, after which the leaders and their teams would fly home. Gorbachev and Reagan reviewed the results from the previous night, and despite the working groups’ progress, both leaders thought they could do better. “I thought,” Shultz wrote, “here are stunning breakthroughs in Soviet-U.S. arms control negotiations—they both know that—and they are both disappointed! But I also agreed with the president that now was the time to press Gorbachev in order to get as much out of this meeting as possible before the negotiators returned to the traditional framework of Geneva.”29

  With a 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons in hand, they returned to the question of intermediate-range missiles. Reagan pressed to abolish them globally, but at a minimum insisted that removal of those weapons from Europe be accompanied by a reduction in Asian systems as well. “I cannot permit,” Reagan maintained, “the creation of a situation where we would reduce these missiles to zero in Europe and not make proportional reductions of similar Soviet missiles in Asia. SS-20 missiles are mobile and can be moved easily. Their presence exerts an influence on our Asian allies, not to mention our allies in Europe.”30 If Gorbachev could not agree to eliminate the weapons globally, Reagan suggested that they reduce their forces to one hundred missiles each in Europe as an intermediate measure. Gorbachev, rejecting an interim solution, focused on removing the weapons from Europe. “If we find a solution on Asian missiles,” he asked Reagan, “do you accept zero in Europe?” “Yes,” replied Reagan.31

  As a compromise, Gorbachev suggested eliminating INF missiles in Europe and setting a ceiling of one hundred INF missiles each in Asia. Reagan hesitated. He shot a questioning look to Shultz, who whispered to him, “We should keep after complete elimination, but this is a good deal, better than we were willing to accept before we came here.”32 Reagan accepted the proposal, telling Gorbachev he saw it as an interim step toward a goal of total elimination. Both sides agreed to work toward a ban on nuclear testing in concert with their reductions in nuclear stockpiles, and in what the Americans viewed as a major breakthrough, the Soviets consented to make human rights a regular subject of the two sides’ agenda in future discussions. “George and I,” Reagan recalled, “couldn’t believe what was happening.

  We were getting amazing agreements. As the day went on I felt something momentous was occurring. Our noon deadline came and went. We ignored the clock and kept on working, the four of us and our interpreters in that room above the sea.”33

  “The present chance,” Gorbachev warned, “might be the only one. I was not in a position a year ago, to say nothing of two or three years ago, to make the kind of
proposals I am now making. I might not be able to make the same proposals in a year or so. Time passes. Things change.”34 Gorbachev pointed out that he had been the one making most of the concessions and asked for one in return. “If we are going to reduce nuclear weapons,” he said, “we have to be confident that the United States is not going to do anything behind the back of the USSR, and the USSR is not going to do anything behind the back of the United States that would threaten the interests of the other side, degrade the agreement, or create difficulties. So,” he asserted, “it is necessary to strengthen the ABM regime.”35 It was essential to include a ten-year period in which both sides committed not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. Gorbachev understood that the president did not like to make compromises. “But,” he told Reagan, “it takes two to tango. With respect to the major questions of arms control and nuclear disarmament, the two leaders were the only partners in sight. Was the President prepared to dance?”36 “If the parties are undertaking deep reductions in nuclear weapons,” Gorbachev said, “there must be an atmosphere of confidence, and to achieve that the conditions of the ABM Treaty must be toughened.” He cautioned that “if the fate of the ABM Treaty is not clear then the whole concept collapses and we are back where we were before Reykjavik.”37

  They agreed to a two-hour break, and while President Reagan returned to the American Embassy for lunch, the U.S. team, which had already gotten into the motorcade, was called back to Hofti House. The Soviets, Shevardnadze had told Shultz, had made all the concessions. Now it was the Americans’ turn.

  “We’re at a very serious impasse”38 on strategic weapons and defense, Shultz explained to the group, and they needed fresh ideas to bridge the gap. “Unless the United States could suggest something dramatic,” Reagan’s national security adviser, Admiral John Poindexter, felt, “it could be placed in the very difficult position of having been offered large-scale Soviet concessions and having no response other than to reject them due to the SDI conditions.”39 Robert Linhard, an air force colonel and senior National Security Council arms-control expert sitting in the back of the room, scribbled an idea on a legal pad and passed it around to the other members of the American team, who nodded in agreement as they read it. When it reached Shultz, he read it intently before turning to the Soviets seated across the table. “I would like to explore with you,” Schultz said, “an idea that I have not discussed with the president, but please hear me out. This is an effort by some of us here to break the impasse. I don’t know how the president will react to it. If after the break, you hear some pounding in our area, you’ll know that the president is knocking my head against the wall.”40

  Linhard’s proposal gave way to the Soviet demand and committed each side to confine itself to research, development, and testing permitted by the ABM Treaty for ten years, and significantly increased the stakes. During the first five years both sides would reduce their strategic offensive arsenals by 50 percent. In the second five-year period they would eliminate all remaining strategic missiles. The United States would destroy its entire force of 1,650 strategic missiles along with 7,800 nuclear war-heads, while the Soviets would eliminate their 2,300 long-range missiles with 9,200 warheads. Both countries would retain their nuclear bombers, cruise missiles, and battlefield weapons, but it would remove the most dangerous and destabilizing weapons from their arsenals. After ten years, with all offensive ballistic missiles eliminated, each side would be free to deploy defenses. Shevardnadze agreed the proposal was worth considering.

  When President Reagan arrived at half past two and met with the U.S. team to discuss the afternoon session, they told him of the new proposal. The prospect of banning all ballistic missiles raised the discussion to a new level, and the Americans felt comfortable with the offer because American superiority in bomber technology (including the then-secret stealth bomber program) would leave it with an advantage. Reagan liked the proposal, which he found imaginative. “He gets his precious ABM Treaty, and we get all his ballistic missiles. And after that we can deploy SDI in space. Then it’s a whole new ball game.”41

  “Before Reagan and Gorbachev resumed their meeting,” recalled Jack Matlock, a senior White House arms-control adviser, “the American delegation reviewed the state of play. It seemed almost certain that an agreement could be reached, either by somehow bridging the gap on the remaining differences or by deciding to conclude a treaty to achieve the reductions that had been agreed while continuing negotiations on the disputed points.”42 Emotions ran high on the Soviet side as well. “Everyone was elated, on the one hand, but on the other hand a little bit frightened with what was going on,” wrote one member of the Soviet team. “We were in a big game with high stakes, and the stakes were being raised every five minutes.”43 Gorbachev observed, “Both the negotiating teams realized that this was a unique opportunity to break out of the vicious circle of the nuclear arms race.”44

  The leaders reconvened at three thirty, and when Reagan presented Gorbachev with the formula Linhard and Shultz had come up with during the break and pointed out that the Americans had now satisfied the Soviet need for ten years on the ABM Treaty, the Soviets raised an additional demand. During the ten-year nonwithdrawal period, testing of antimissile systems must also be confined to the laboratory. The language of the ABM Treaty left room for ambiguity, as the technology used in the American program did not exist in 1972 when the treaty was written, but Gorbachev insisted on both sides adhering to a strict interpretation confining all strategic defense-related research to laboratories as part of their agreement. Gorbachev contended:

  Your formula fails to meet our position halfway. Our point of view is that we will eliminate strategic nuclear forces in these 10 years. In the meantime, while the USSR and the U.S. are carrying out deep reductions in nuclear weapons we ought to reinforce instead of undermining the ABM Treaty. That’s why we are proposing to strengthen the ABM regime in that very crucial period. Why complicate things with other problems which we are uncertain about, the consequences of which are unclear? Why burden an agreement by these weights? You have to agree that it would be more difficult for us to go along with this if you tie us down with aggravating weights. That is why we are proposing that we come to an agreement regarding the 10-year period of non-withdrawal from the ABM Treaty; to carry out research only in laboratories during that period, and then after the period is over and strategic weapons have been eliminated, discuss what to do next.45

  Gorbachev asked Reagan to consider his request, and both recognized that an agreement was within sight. “This is a rather strange situation,” Reagan observed. “We have both put forth specific demands. You are in favor of a 10-year period. I have said that I will not give up SDI. But both of us, obviously, can say that the most important thing is to eliminate nuclear arsenals.”46 Ten years from now, President Reagan told the Soviet leader, he would be a very old man. He and Gorbachev would return to Iceland and each would bring his country’s last nuclear missile. Reagan would be so old by then Gorbachev would not recognize him. The president would say, “Hello, Mikhail.” Gorbachev would say, “Ron, is that you?” and together they would destroy the last two missiles and throw a tremendous party for the whole world.47

  Reagan suggested deferring the laboratory testing question until Gorbachev’s Washington visit: “What’s wrong with saying ‘research, development, and testing as permitted by the ABM Treaty? Then, when we meet in Washington in the summer, we can discuss whether testing is allowed under ABM provisions.”48 Gorbachev replied firmly, “Without that there’s no package. All of the elements are interrelated. If we come to an agreement on deep reductions of nuclear weapons, we must have assurance that the ABM Treaty will not only be complied with but also strengthened in this crucial period. I repeat, this period is too crucial, it is dangerous to improvise.”49

  Shultz suggested a recess, and the leaders gathered upstairs with their advisers. Gorbachev paced excitedly back and forth. “Everything,” he told the Soviet team, “could be d
ecided right now.”50 On the other side of the room, Reagan met with the Americans. Matlock described “a feeling of tension and anticipation” among both groups. “Euphoria lurked, barely concealed, under the surface of emotions. The U.S. and USSR seemed to be on the verge of the most sweeping commitments in history to reduce mankind’s most destructive weaponry.”51 Reagan’s chief of staff, Donald Regan, recalled that the discussion “was animated, urgent, informal, and very tense. The noise level was high in both languages; all faces were deadly serious. No one sat down. The President beckoned me to him. ‘Don, this is taking too long,’ he murmured. He wanted to get back to Washington— he had planned on having Sunday dinner at home. Reagan was annoyed and disappointed. ‘I don’t see how it can last much longer, Mr. President,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to hang in there—if we can get this package, it’ll be worth it.’ . . . Reagan sighed and nodded. Now, with both leaders on the edge of exhaustion, our final proposal was ready.”52 The president decided not to make any substantive changes but simply to rework the text of the proposal, putting it into the Soviet format. Reagan was prepared to accept Gorbachev’s position on the ten-year non withdrawal period for the ABM Treaty, along with every other Soviet point including elimination of all nuclear weapons at the end of the ten years. For Reagan, the only remaining make-or-break obstacle was Gorbachev’s demand to confine SDI research to the laboratory. The American team smelled blood. The Soviets “were desperate for an agreement on SDI,” Regan observed. “They were in trouble, we could see that.”53